Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Kiernan is not old enough for baseball

So an email pops into my gmail inbox, cc'd to a wide range of people, but it's not classified as spam. I'm always curious how some emails get by the spam filter, so I take a look. It's "Hey Team, it's time for boys spring baseball" email from Peter... but it's actually talking about baseball... and how no peanuts should be brought to the game since some of the kids have allergies... and contact phone numbers are provided for Timothy...

Is it spam? Or mistaken emailing? The site referred to in the email has no registrant details when I do a whois lookup... and there's a PDF attachment with a contact list (addresses and phone numbers for everyone), including my email as the contact for a child named Joseph... I don't want to reply, lest that causes my email address to go on the "suckers to send more spam to" list. So I ignore it.

The next day an email reply comes from Melissa saying that Amby can't make it to the first practice but is looking forward to the season. Okay, really? Is this trickery? Melissa does indeed match up in the Team Roster as the mom of David Amby... This way too elaborate for spam. I feel confident that the link referred to in the initial email may in fact be junior boys baseball, and if it is, then I'll let these people know they have the wrong email address for Joseph's dad.

Fast forward to today, when Kelli emails me with the email subject "The future Red Sox" saying "Sorry to miss your call. What goes on in Vegas.... sure you had a great time... blah blah baseball talk..." and a forwarded message from some Mike guy talking about Victor's dad Eric offering to volunteering to help coach. Okay, you people are back? But there's no link, no ads, no tracking images, no anything connecting to Spanish spam, so what is your purpose, Kelli (who, I might add, is not on the team roster, nor is Mike)... And I thought I was Joseph's dad, not Victor's. They go to the trouble of generating PDFs but don't have a database set up to keep things consistent?

The ironic statement at the end of Kelli's email: "P.S I passed along your correct email."

ha. ha. ha.

But hold on, I'm curious about something, since this is all still way to complex for a spam scam... a googling of "cybsa" brings up the Cohasset Youth Baseball and Softball Association... things then start clicking into place: Everyone on the team roster is in Cohasset, MA... a 411 search for my last name in Cohasset brings up a person with my name whose phone number and address match those mentioned in the third email...

crap.

I guess I'll have to mass email them all now, making sure to link to my blog.